Until this invention, alternative energy sources to coal, oil and natural gas, have not provided a solution to the depletion of fossil fuel resources or the pollution and environmental damage caused by coal, oil and natural gas. The demand energy is increasing as more and more people use energy consuming technology in their daily lives. This increased demand is occurring in the United States of America and globally. Oil, coal and natural gas are limited natural resources and the global supply is being consumed more quickly than ever before.
Nuclear energy is efficient and long-lasting but creates radioactive waste and potential contamination such as 3 mile island or the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melt down. Hydro power plants provide energy with no air pollution, but damage salmon runs, require the flooding of upriver environments and change entire local ecosystems. So, there is certainly an increasing need for an inexpensive, efficient, clean, and non-depleting energy source. Concentrated solar power can provide this energy source. This invention provides a new way of concentrating solar power.
For thousands of years people have not developed a system for concentrating solar energy, as this invention does. From the long history of solar energy utilization, this invention finally provides the right design to meet the increasing demand for energy. The power of the sun has been depicted in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics as hands attached to the beams of light radiating on the ancient Egyptian Pharos. This invention brings the depictions of those hand rays together into a collimated beam, a beam column to support the energy demands of civilization for the next millennium.
In the past Millenia, solar power has been used, but not to the degree this invention would allow. Sunlight has been focused by troops under the direction of Archimedes. Greco-Roman historians assert that during the Roman siege of Syracuse from 214 to 212 B.C., at the height of the Second Punic War, Archimedes directed troops to form a large parabolic troughs using bronze mirrors to focus sunlight on Roman ships and set them on fire. Plinius (23-79 AD) indicated that ancient Roman physicians used glass spheres filled with water to focus light to burn wounds and heal infections.
During the 9th century AD, Kings and Caliphs of the Arab world, focused light to burn targets objects 30 to 100 cubits away. Around 1000 AD al-Hytham, Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham, 966-1040 believed that the sun's rays of light were streams of tiny particles travelling in straight lines and researched spherical and parabolic mirrors regarding focusing sunlight. In China, the Middle East and Europe in the middle ages telescopes were used aid distant viewing to discover new worlds or better see an attacking enemy.
Around 1819, French physicist Augustin Fresnel (1788-1827), conducted a experiments and developed a lens—the Fresnel Lens. Faced with the need to construct a large lens for a lighthouse of appropriate focal length, and unable to support the large weight of a double convex lens of that size, Fresnel developed a lens comprising thick lens sections, maintaining the same focal length with a fraction of the weight. Hence the development of the Fresnel lens.
In 1913 a Mr. Shuman created an array of parabolic troughs in Egypt about the size of two football fields. The array was designed to heat water in the focal point of the trough. This ran a 41 kW pumping system installed in Egypt by Shuman. This system consisted of five north/south axis parabolic trough concentrators with an aperture width of 4 m and an aperture area of 1255 square meters. Shuman's system worked successfully for a number of years.
In the 1970s, in southern France, a large parabolic solar concentrator was constructed using a tower at the center to collect the thermal energy of the concentrated light and pumping through molten salts to transfer heat to a turbine.
In the 1980 and 1990s the Lutz project in the Mojave dessert in California has been one of the worlds large-scale application of solar concentrators with parabolic troughs built to run with a hybrid solar-gas power plant. The Lutz project consisted of single axis parabolic troughs. With a pipe at the focal point molten salts transferred the heat to a central reactor for energy production.
Currently there are a variety of parabolic troughs/dishes that track the sun or that are stationary and are used to concentrate solar energy. These parabolic concentrators are readily available in the United State's market and are available in most states or can be purchased over the Internet. So the contemporary means of producing solar energy are from solar concentrating troughs or mirror isotherms, photovoltaic cells, or passive solar heating. Overall these systems have not provided sufficient efficiency, economy of production, or power to become a viable alternative to fossil fuels.